Amazon Just Added Two Features to Alexa’s Calendar Abilities

May 23, 20189:25 am

Amazon has been improving Alexa’s diary-managing skills for a while now, adding support for Outlook and iCloud in 2017. This made it easy to ask Alexa to put a meeting in your calendar on a set time and day. Just say: “Alexa, schedule a meeting for 2pm tomorrow afternoon.”

Starting this week, Alexa is now able to edit these arrangements too. You can say: “Alexa, rearrange my meeting” and the assistant will ask for more details about which one, and when to move it to.

You can also say: “Alexa, move my 9am meeting to tomorrow at 2pm” and the change will be made, appearing right away in the calendar on your computer, smartphone or wherever you view it.

The second new feature to arrive on Alexa this week enables you to schedule a one-on-one meeting with a specific person from your contacts list.

Say: “Alexa, schedule a meeting with Jeff Bezos” and the assistant will find Jeff Bezos from your contacts list and ask you to confirm which Jeff Bezos you are talking about. Alexa then suggests a time based on both of your availabilities. That final detail requires you to have previously set yours and Jeffs’ calendar to share availability with each other.

These new features are available now for Alexa users in the US, and calendars in Gmail, G Suite, Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange are all supported.

About Nelson Régo

Nelson Régo is the owner and founder of the Cool Blind Tech website since November of 2012. Nelson launched the first show on March 14, 2013. He also directs the website as a whole, hiring staff, originating new shows, and approving all content.

Winston Chen, the developer of the iOS app, Voice Dream Reader, sits down with the team at Cool Blind Tech to tell the story of how having been inspired by a Ted Talk podcast, his departure from mainstream tech, life on an Artic island north of Norway, and how that led to the development of Voice Dream Reader. Mr. Chen describes the original intent for Voice Dream Reader, and how that later manifested into an app for educators, the blind, and dyslexic.

Mr. Chen proceeds to announce the release of a new iOS word processing application which is designed specifically with blind people in mind. The new app is called, Voice Dream Writer, and is available shortly in the App Store for $9.99.

Text-To-Speech Proofreading. Professional proofreaders recommend reading out loud as the best way to catch mistakes. Like a personal proofreader, Voice Dream Writer reads your writing using text-to-speech, so you can easily spot awkward sentences, grammatical errors and typos. Also, it can read words and sentences as you type or voice dictate. This way, you can type faster because you no longer have to look up to check the text you just wrote.

Word Finder. Voice Dream Writer helps you find the right words using phonetic search and meaning search. For example, search for “inuf” phonetically, and you will find “enough”, and search for “Fast Africa Cat” by meaning and you will find “Cheetah.” Word Finder also shows you the dictionary definition of a word as you type without you having to select anything or open another program.

Outline. As you write, Voice Dream Writer automatically creates an outline of headings, paragraphs and sentences. The Outline helps you structure your document better by giving you an always-on overview. You can also quickly navigate to a section in a long document without endless scrolling. Finally, you can drag and drop elements in the Outline to organize your writing. No more selecting, cutting and pasting large blocks of text.

Besides these unique features, Voice Dream Writer also comes with everything you would expect from any great writing tool: